Proximity grounds moral responsibility while abstract categories remain morally neutral.

Evidence

It seems that what keeps personal images and abstract stereotypes apart and wards off the clash that every logician would deem inevitable is the moral saturation of the first and the morally-neutral, purely intellectual, character of the second. That proximity-cum-responsibility context within which personal images are formed surrounds them with a thick moral wall virtually impenetrable to ‘merely abstract’ arguments. Persuasive or insidious the intellectual stereotype may be, yet its zone of application stops abruptly where the sphere of personal intercourse begins. ‘The other’ as an abstract category simply does not communicate with ‘the other’ I know. The second belongs within the realm of morality, while the first is cast firmly outside. The second resides in the semantic universe of good and evil, which stubbornly refuses to be subordinated to the discourse of efficiency and rational choice. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 526

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of the proximity-morality mechanism: moral responsibility is generated by personal proximity, not by abstract categories.
• XREF: Directly maps to the Levinasian ‘face-to-face’ ethics that Bauman’s later work (Postmodern Ethics) builds on, and to the Islamophobia framing of the ‘Other’ as abstract stereotype. — connects to: Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 84; Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 102; Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 547 (+6 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradoxical claim — that moral responsibility attaches only to the known ‘other’ and absolutely not to the abstract category — is the load-bearing concept this chapter contributes to the field.

Related

• Morality dies when social distance replaces proximity, enabling mass murder (similarity 0.88)
• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance (similarity 0.87)
• Morality operates only on known persons and fails on abstract categories (similarity 0.87)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.84)
• Face-to-face animosity rarely extends into mass murder. (similarity 0.83)
• Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely (similarity 0.81)
• Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. (similarity 0.81)
• Modern society weakens morality through distance, technical responsibility, and segregation (similarity 0.80)
• Levinasian responsibility precedes knowledge and intention unconditionally. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 547
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 546
• Morality operates only on known persons and fails on abstract categories #expands (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 533
• Modern society weakens morality through distance, technical responsibility, and segregation #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 567
• Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. #exemplifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 528